


We Will (Not) Always Have Each Other

by Rockinlibrarian



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Ableist Language, Alternate POV, Canon Retelling, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Chapter 8, Codependency, Friendship, Gen, Illusions, Mental Institutions, Mental Parasite, Platonic Relationships, Season/Series 01, Sibling Love, Stalking, Teamwork, The Astral Plane, chapter 6, chapter 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23265070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rockinlibrarian/pseuds/Rockinlibrarian
Summary: In Which I retell Chapters 6-8 from the POV of my babies, the Loudermilk Twins. "A lot of Kerry’s memories were fuzzy, but she clung to the sound of Mama’s voice in her head, ran it on a loop over and over: no matter what happens, you’ll always have each other. So where was he now when she most needed him?"
Relationships: Melanie Bird/Oliver Bird
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	We Will (Not) Always Have Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> It's Chapters 6-8 from an alternating-Loudermilk POV. A lot of dialogue is lifted right from the show, so co-credit to everyone there, but I've written in-between scenes and extended scenes and cut other scenes so that this tells Cary and Kerry's story, which happened to involve some stuff with a psychic parasite and all that but is mostly about THEM being THEM. It was mostly a challenge to myself, after having written so much of their backstory in The Loudermilk Chronicles, to see if I could look at canon through the point of view of my headcanon. I hope you also find it interesting to experience one of the best runs of episodes of the show (that conveniently even gives the Loudermilks their own arc!) from a different perspective. Or two.

It had taken 60-some years, but Mama’s worst nightmare had finally come true: they had been taken away and tossed into an insane asylum. Granted, they’d been emancipated adults for decades so the concept of “taken away” had lost some pathos (though, _had_ they been taken away from somewhere? Neither of them could remember exactly _how_ they’d arrived at Clockworks), and Mama wasn’t even around anymore to lose them. And aside from a general sense of unfocused idleness and a few unpleasant staff, life in Clockworks wasn’t even that bad.

Dr. Busker did seem to get more exasperated with them every day, but that was only because she kept trying to fix what wasn’t even broken. “You can’t have ‘all the same memories’,” she snapped (a little more roughly than a health care professional should behave, in Cary’s opinion). “You’re not even the same age! You,” she jabbed a finger toward Kerry, “have simply replaced your own memories with stories he’s told you about his own childhood. You don’t want to deal with your real past, so your subconscious has overwritten your memories with a story you like more.”

“I like being fed caterpillars by bullies?” Kerry said incredulously.

“And you’re not taking into account,” Cary put in, “that she’s _there_. In my memories. She’s been there all along. How could she have replaced her own memories with mine when she’s in them?”

“ _You_ have edited _your_ own memories. She reminds you of someone you used to know—a _real_ sister who must have died long ago—and now you remember her _as_ that person.”

“Occam’s Razor would suggest th—”

“Don’t try to ‘Occam’s Razor’ me, four-eyes. I’m not the one in the loony bin.” Cary was certain this was outright _inappropriate_ language for a health care professional, but she had a point: they were the ones in the loony bin, so no one would take them seriously if they complained. “Besides,” she continued, less heatedly, “how can she be _in_ your memories _and_ claim that your memories _are_ her memories?”

But _Because that’s just the way it is_ was not an acceptable answer in therapy. The point of therapy, at least Dr. Busker’s therapy, was to _challenge_ patients’ beliefs that things were just the way they were. Only in this case, she was wrong, and they were right. That was the one thing they knew for certain. They were _one_ , and they always had been, even if it seemed impossible to everyone else.

Kerry was having a slightly harder time adjusting to Clockworks than Cary was. She felt weirdly exposed, and sometimes she just wanted to throw herself at Cary and…be _engulfed_ by him. Not hugged, engulfed. She couldn’t explain it. It definitely wasn’t something sexual. It was more like, she needed Cary to be her armor. Which kind of annoyed her when she thought too hard about it, because _she_ was supposed to be _his_ protector.

“It’s understandable,” Cary said immediately. “You’re not used to spending so much time outside.” Even as he said it, he knew it didn’t make sense. They never went outside at Clockworks. It was another of those things he just _knew_ , tickling the edges of his foggy memory, without really knowing why.

Memory seemed to be a touchy subject, on the whole, whether shared memories, overwritten memories, or lost ones. They couldn’t even discuss it out in the common room with the other patients, as, they’d been warned, the entire concept was a major trigger for that young man, Paul. _He keeps reliving his memories. You’ll hurt him with careless talk about losing yours._

For such a memory-traumatized person, Paul was pleasant company in the common room, joking with David, a young man who alternated between overjoy at his progress and an inexplicable rivalry with one of the nurses. David had a girlfriend, Schizophrenic Syd, who seemed sensible and interesting enough most of the time, but then she’d say something like, “Do you ever get the feeling none of us are really here?” and they’d remember where they _were_.

Fortunately, they’d somehow ended up at the same mental hospital as one of their oldest friends, Melanie Bird, though she was in sad shape and rarely spoke to anyone. She hadn’t been the same since her husband had…gone? Left? Died? “What did happen to Oliver Bird?” Cary asked Kerry that night. “Was he lost at sea?”

“I thought he was in a scuba diving accident?”

“A scuba diving accident while lost at sea? That…that must be it.” He sighed. “We seem to be losing more memories daily. For tomorrow, let’s memorize the names and functions of all the pharmaceuticals used in this hospital, just to, just to keep the neurons working. I guess we should…say good night, now.”

“Right. That’s…your room…this…is mine.” This happened every night at Clockworks, another sense of something being just a little bit wrong. Obviously, they said good night and went to their separate bedrooms, right? That was sensible. It wasn’t like they slept together. It wasn’t _like_ that. But why did saying good night feel so awkward?

“I’ll just be, uh, I’ll be right over there, if you need me.”

“I’ll knock.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, uh, good…night?”

“Yes, that. I’m right—”

“I’m right _here_.”

“Right.”

The next day, while they were playing Memory Checkers Category: Alphabetic Psychiatrics In Pill Form (a game they’d invented in college when Cary had to memorize long lists of data: you could only move if you could identify something in the chosen category), Schizophrenic Syd started rambling about everyone really being dead but not knowing it again. She’d cased it in a story about it being a recurring dream, but Kerry could tell she really believed it and was testing it out on them.

Cary tried to keep the conversation light, sharing the dream he’d had about a giant ice cube and a bad craving for lemonade, and Kerry thought back over her own night. All she could remember seeing was some sort of deep-sea diver, strolling across the room and through the walls. “Wait. Do you remember that old movie, _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_?”

Cary merely grinned, and Kerry knew exactly what he was thinking: how they’d argued afterward when he suggested they should read the book now, and she’d said “why would you give yourself a headache reading when you already know how the story ends?” and he’d said, “Fine, _I’ll_ read it and you just keep your eyes shut.” Take that, Dr. Busker and your people-don’t-share-memories hangups.

“Melanie?” She turned to their old friend, digging in a flower box nearby. “What do you dream about?” Melanie used to be so much fun to discuss dreams with. She could analyze all the symbols and apply them to your particular life.

“Love,” Melanie replied absently. So much for interesting discussions.

Syd, on the other hand, always had a new existential conspiracy theory to share. “Have you guys noticed a door in the hall? It’s not always there.”

Kerry parsed this out before replying. “So, where is it? When it’s not there, I mean.”

“Exactly!” Syd said, as if Kerry had stumbled upon some deep truth instead of just trying to figure out what she’d said. “How can a door be there and not be there at the same time?”

Was this one of those Zen koans that were supposed to teach her patience or whatever? Kerry shot a bewildered look at Cary, but he naturally went immediately to theoretical physics.

“Uh, alternate dimensions, perhaps.” He nonchalantly polished his glasses. “Or physical displacement rooted in four-dimensional geometry. Or, simpler still, the subject,” he gestured toward Syd, “ _you_ , confusing one hallway with another.”

Syd frowned at him. “I’m not making it up.”

“Oh, no one said _making up_ ,” Cary amended quickly. “ _CONFUSING_ , is what I said. As in, the interchangeability of the hallways, and how one memory could be confused with another memory.” Kerry stifled a laugh.

“No. This is something else.” Syd stood, and left, presumably in search of a more sympathetic audience.

Kerry leaned toward her brother and muttered, “I can’t believe you used the ‘confused one memory for another’ excuse on her, Dr. Busker.”

“At least I didn’t try to convince her she’d replaced her memories with someone else’s. Confusing two institutional-looking hallways is actually _likely_. Especially for people who, well, already have a tenuous grip on reality. Haloperidol.” He captured two of her checkers in one move.

Kerry tutted indignantly and started to giggle. Then her eyes caught a mismatched pair across the room and her giggles melted away immediately. “That creep Walter is watching me again.”

“Is he?” Cary turned his head, then ducked back, shielding the side of his face with a hand. “Probably shouldn’t have looked. If he knows we’re talking about him, it’ll only encourage him.”

“I never did like him. I’ve always said I didn’t. Didn’t I always say?”

“Yes. No. You never did like him.” Cary looked confused for a moment. “How long have we known him?”

Kerry tried to remember, but the only clear thing she knew was, “I NEVER liked him. I warned everybody. Melanie? Didn’t I always say not to trust Walter?” Maybe this would get her mind off Oliver.

But Melanie just sighed and said, “Men. Men can’t be trusted. They always leave.”

Kerry rolled her eyes toward the obvious exception, who cleared his throat, pointed at the checkerboard, and suggested, “Let’s switch things up. Only antipsychotics that come in extended-release forms.”

The ice cube was back that night, but Cary was less certain he was dreaming it. He didn’t think he’d ever fallen asleep. It appeared anyway, right in his room…or was his room transported to it?…or was he experiencing two different realities at the same time?…okay, maybe it _was_ a dream, but he was still sure he’d never fallen asleep.

He reached for it, and that’s when he found himself standing in the woods, in the light of day. An old-fashioned aquanaut, straight out of _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,_ stood before him, looking back at him expectantly. Hadn’t Kerry mentioned that earlier today? It definitely must be a dream.

“Er, hello?” Cary ventured. The diver made no response, so he tried a few more languages, in case they didn’t speak English. The diver simply stood there. Maybe some sort of universal sign language? “I saw an ice cube, like a huge… can you take me there?” Now the diver beckoned and began to walk away, and this time, everything clicked into place. He _knew_ that aquanaut. With an elation he hadn’t felt since…well, at least before Clockworks, he followed his friend.

Kerry snapped awake. Something was wrong. First things first: “Cary?” She pounded on the headboard. No answer. Was _that_ the something that was wrong? Because it definitely was wrong. She ran next door and threw open the door without knocking. “Ca-?” He wasn’t there. Not at the desk, not standing across the room. His bed was made as if it hadn’t been touched. She dashed behind it, preferring to find him passed out on the floor there instead of simply…gone.

“And when spring comes, the baby birds must leave the nest,” said a voice behind her.

It was not, unfortunately, Cary.

Creepy Walter. Of all the people she did not want to see right now. “Did you see—is Cary—is he out there?”

Creepy Walter just recited, “’What big eyes you have,’ says the wolf,” as he slithered into the room.

She did not have time for this. “I— Stop. I have to find—I have to find him.” She pushed her way toward the hall, trying to keep as far from Walter as possible, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Before she could get there, Walter shut the door. “Young. But not too young.”

She glared. “Careful, I bite.” It wasn’t a bluff. She knew she could take him down if necessary. Something in the back of her head said she’d done it before. But that was _then_ , in those foggy days before Clockworks. _Then_ , she knew Cary was waiting for her, ready to comfort her, to heal her. Now, Cary was missing.

Now, she was terrified.

“Did you ever eat an animal that was still living?” He leaned in far, far too close, gripping the zipper of her sweatshirt. “There’s a smell. A heat. You’re burning up.”

As he reached for her forehead, she saw her opening. She ducked, and dodged, and dashed for the door, screaming for Cary the whole way.

It was just like old times, aside from the sitting-in-a-giant-ice-cube part. And Oliver seemed to have lost some of his grasp on the English language. But it _was_ Oliver, still looking as he had in his forties, still trying to save the world with their collective brainpower.

The memories had come flooding back the longer Cary had followed that familiar diving suit—the diving suit that, somewhere in reality, in the basement of their communal home, Summerland, held the frozen body of Oliver Bird. The _mind_ of Oliver Bird had wandered off years ago and lost itself on the Astral Plane—yet here he was, in a mentally-projected ice cube penthouse, brainstorming over martinis as if no time had passed.

And it seemed the only reason Cary could talk to him now was that, he, _too_ , was lost on the Astral Plane, along with all their teammates from Summerland, held captive in an imaginary mental hospital by an all-too-real psychic parasite.

“The next question is, how?” Oliver was asking. “How do we rescue them? We are just minds, after all. And their bodies are in quite a jumble— facing certain death and all that.” 

Cary gawked in horror at the frozen scene Oliver had summoned like a slideshow projection onto his equally frozen wall. Even as he’d recalled so much of what he’d forgotten in Clockworks— how he and the Birds had created Summerland as a refuge for mutants with special powers (like Oliver, a powerful telepath, and like…like himself, and Kerry, two parts of one whole indeed)—it wasn’t until he saw the mess their bodies were in that he remembered the extent of it. Kerry’d recently been near-slaughtered in a fight with the anti-mutant agency, Division Three, and he’d taken on most of her wounds. They’d both still managed to hobble into this no longer peaceful suburban bedroom, tracking David, an even more powerful telepath who was being possessed by a psychic being even more powerful still. Someone had just fired off a machine gun—it looked like that nice young man, Rudy, but he would never have done something like that— and the bullets hung in the air, suspended in time. Amahl Farouk, the psychic parasite, who called himself the Shadow King, had apparently frozen time at that moment so he could play with all their minds in a dream state.

“He’s too powerful for me, Farouk. He’s too virile, psychically. _David_ could break you out of the dream, possibly all of you, but he’s compromised, currently.” Oliver called up another image on the opposite wall, a moving image, young David screaming and pounding on an invisible barrier. “Farouk has locked him away in a tiny corner of his mind. He’ll be gone entirely soon. And then the Shadow King will become David.”

Oliver rose to adjust his martini, asking Cary if he’d like the same, but Cary wasn’t paying attention to Oliver or the martini anymore. He stared at the distraught image of David. _That’s_ what he’d been working on before Clockworks. He’d been trying to sort out all the tangled, powerful frequencies in poor David’s brain. He’d just found that blip, that parasite, and then he’d put together a… “My device!” he gasped. “I made a, a halo, randomly firing electromagnetic signals in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree radius, which should, if we can put it on David’s head—” he shook a finger toward the image across the room “—the real David, in the now-frozen timeline, it should block the Shadow King. Isolate it, a-a-and end the hospital fantasy.”

“Unfreezing time and executing your friends in a hail of bullets, unfortunately.” Oliver cocked his head toward the image.

“Unless we can physically change the dynamics of the room. Block the bullets, move the bodies!” It was a complex endeavor, but not impossible, as long as they could work together. “We’re going to need everybody.”

Oliver wandered over to the diving suit, and swept an arm toward it dramatically. “Let me introduce you to my friend, Jules Verne. He will allow you to navigate the Astral Plane in relative…what’s the word, pillows? _Safety._ You can wander through anyone’s dreams, projections, illusions, and he’ll always help you find your way home. You go out, you follow the tether right back here.”

“Home,” Cary repeated. “It was supposed to keep you tethered to _home_. Your real home, Summerland.”

Oliver frowned. “Bit of an ironic name for an ice cube.”

“We had to cryogenically freeze you—your body—when you didn’t come back,” Cary said apologetically. “Melanie never gave up hope.”

“Melanie. That’s the, the—”

“Your wife.” This was the third time they'd had this conversation in the past ten minutes.

“The not-Chinese wife, yes.”

Cary shook his head. “It’s been over twenty _years_ , Oliver! We’ve missed you— _she’s_ missed you—isn’t it time to come home?”

Staring at the image of reality, Oliver paused, then said, “I’d much rather wait until you’re not in mortal peril, if it's all the same to you.”

“Fine, then. Let’s get out of mortal peril. So, we take…Mr, Mr. Verne, here, back to the hospital and alert the others—”

“ _You_ ,” Oliver clarified. “There’s only one suit, and you know these people better than I do. _You_ take Jules Verne back to the hospital.”

“W-wait, one thing though. Maybe Mr. Verne can keep me tethered here, but what’s to stop me being sucked back into the illusion once I get there? She made us forget so m…. She. Dr. Busker. The Shadow King was posing as a psychologist, as a friend of David’s.”

Oliver knit his brow and pointed toward Cary’s face. “Could I have a look at those…spectogoogles of yours for a moment?”

“My…spectacles? Glasses?” Cary pulled them off and glanced questioningly at either side of them before handing them to Oliver. “Why? Did she…er, he? It?…the parasite… do something to them?”

Oliver twirled the glasses over between his fingers and handed them back. “No, but _I_ have. Now you should be able to see through the illusions it throws at you.”

Cary squinted at them before sliding them back in place. He noticed no difference. But then, he wasn’t in the hospital. “What about the others?”

“Right.” Oliver took the glasses back and tapped them on his open palm. A series of identical glasses fanned out. “Yours—” he handed the originals back to Cary “—and theirs. Clear eyes for everyone.”

“Can they— are these prescrip—because I have terribly bad eyes--”

“Relax. We’re in a magical mind-made land. They’ll adjust to the user.”

Cary tucked them into his jacket pocket. “So, I’ll give these to Kerry, to hand out—”

“You’re already wearing yours.”

Cary paused. If Oliver had so much trouble remembering his own wife, Cary couldn’t very well expect him to remember about Kerry. He shook his head. “I’ll give these to the others and instruct them to keep Len-the, the monster busy, while we take an extraction team back to, to reality—the suit does go there, doesn’t it? Melanie said she saw you, the, the suit, the other day—”

“Yes, probably.” Oliver nodded. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for awhile. You _can_ get there in the suit, but of course you’ll only be a sort of ghost. And this, extraction team, you say— well, none of them will be able to get back here without the suit, so I do hope they actually succeed or they’ll end up drifting.”

“We’ll succeed. We have no choice.”

When they first left for college, Mama had been distraught, though she tried to play it down. “It’s not a Residential Indian School, it’s a proper, multicultural university,” Cary’d tried to reassure her. “They’ll let us come home over holidays, or- or whenever we need to!”

“I know, and you’re going to do brilliant things there! It’s not your fault that I can’t help feeling—the way it felt to be kept away from my family. And then your father….”

“What, no, you’re not comparing us to _him_ ,” Kerry’d protested. “ _We_ are only leaving to do you proud in the big wide world. _He_ left because he’s a stuck-up irresponsible asshole.”

“That language is unbecoming in a ten year old, Kerry.”

“I’m not ten, I’m sixteen and I’m going to college.”

Mama had laughed and pulled them into a hug and said, “I’m just so glad that no one can ever pull you two apart. I know that no matter what happens, you’ll always have each other.”

A lot of Kerry’s memories were fuzzy—she couldn’t quite remember _why_ Mama had been so sure no one could ever pull them apart, or even why they’d argued about how old she was—but she clung to the sound of Mama’s voice in her head, ran it on a loop over and over: _no matter what happens, you’ll always have each other_.

So where was he _now_ when she most needed him?

He wasn’t in the hallway. _No_ one was in the hallway but her and, not far enough behind her, Creepy Walter, whistling carelessly as he strolled along, somehow almost as fast as she could run. The halls seemed to loop endlessly, hallway after identical hallway, going nowhere and finding no one. When had Clockworks gotten so big? And where had everyone gone?

Mundane robotic announcements continued over the sound system, but red warning lights flashed at every corner. Had there been a fire? An invasion? An alien abduction? The farther she ran, the more broken the hospital looked: smudges on the walls, ceiling tiles missing, live wires dangling. “CARY!” she shouted into every room along the way. If she could just find some trace of him! If she could just lose Walter from her tail!

Once she darted around a doorway and hid until she was certain Walter had passed. It worked. But now she had no idea where she was, no idea how to get back to the corridors she knew. And Cary was still nowhere to be found.

His first stop was Melanie. If he led her back to reality, she could get a head start solving the imminent death problem. Melanie was one of the smartest people he knew, which was saying something. If anyone could figure out a solution, she could.

She also apparently thought he was Oliver. “I’m coming, my love!” she called as she followed him. Cary bit his lip. He did _love_ Melanie, as a good friend, but this kind of talk was certainly going too far.

The way to reality appeared to lead right through the cryogenic room at Summerland. He was right. Oliver’s astral diving suit _was_ tethered to the real thing. He _could_ come home, if he tried.

They slipped through, and into the time-frozen bedroom of chaos. Jules Verne made every action feel like swimming underwater, but he tried, through the best charades he could manage, to get Melanie to focus on the problem. 

“I don’t understand. Why can’t you just talk to me?” She pleaded at him—no, at the man in her husband’s diving suit—with the neediest, hungriest sad eyes. This was exceedingly uncomfortable.

 _Stop looking at the suit, look at the imminent death!_ He pointed again, as forcefully as he could manage.

Then her eyes popped at the sight of the suspended bullets. _Good_. She got it. Now to the others.

He found the dream Clockworks again easily, just by thinking of Kerry. She was there, somewhere, and soon again so was he. He stopped to look around in the familiar common room. Everything seemed so colorless and empty through the illusion-free glasses. How had he been fooled for so long?

Their bedrooms had been just around this corner, side by side— in retrospect it was kind of nice of the monster not to have put them in separate hallways. Kerry’s door hung open.

She wasn’t there.

Had this been part of the illusion? He’d only _thought_ she’d been there? But no, he knew Kerry. He knew, no matter how many lies had been swirling around them, the real Kerry had been there, beside him, the whole time.

What if this was the _wrong_ dream hospital, an alternate dimension of a mental projection…? No. Occam’s Razor, he reminded himself. Don’t over-complicate this. He poked his head through the far wall of the room. On the other side, Paul— no, _Ptonomy_ , was what he was calling himself, in reality— slept peacefully. Okay. He was in the right place. But where was Kerry? He was running out of time! He turned around and slipped through the other wall, into his own room. Maybe she was waiting for him there. But that room was empty, too.

 _Think, Cary!_ Every second he stood here, the Shadow King was getting closer to taking over. He set out at top glide through the walls— Jules Verne didn’t allow for running— looking for someone who could— anyone who could— 

Syd. Of course! Schiz- NOT-so-Schizophrenic Syd! She already suspected the hospital wasn’t real. It wouldn’t take much convincing to get her on board with the plan.

The halls weren’t empty anymore. But all the other patients—if that’s who they _had_ been—had turned into shambling zombies. Any distance she put between herself and Creepy Walter soon filled with living dead, lunging at her, clawing at her, blocking her escape. Instinctively, she fended them off, but they just kept coming.

Maybe it’s good that Cary’s not here, she thought briefly. He couldn’t possibly fight them off. He’d just stand there asking them how they can function with such improbable physiology, and then they’d rip his head off. Maybe they already _had_ ripped his head off. Or maybe he’d become a zombie, too. “CARY!” she screeched again, her throat ragged from screaming.

She spotted a double door to the side of the crowded room, into a hallway that appeared empty through the windows. She darted through them and slammed them shut, looking around frantically for something that would hold them. A loose stick of rebar from the now-crumbling walls. Perfect.

She slumped against the door, then looked up. She was still surrounded by zombies. “No!” She didn’t think she had the energy left to push them off anymore, and they kept piling closer. Despairing, she kicked and swatted, not even trying to stand up. One of them looked like Cary with long hair. Great, he _had_ been zombified, and for some reason it made his hair grow girly. The long-haired Cary kept trying to force something at her face.

Then the something fell into place, and she blinked. Everyone had disappeared except long-haired Cary, who wasn’t Cary at all. It was Schizophrenic Syd wearing Cary’s glasses. Kerry realized that was what was on _her_ face—another pair of Cary’s glasses.

Syd raised a finger to her lips and beckoned Kerry up.

“See?” Syd whispered as she led Kerry away from the doors, toward the only remaining person in the hallway, a catatonic man in a wheelchair. “They’re just an illusion. I’m real, you’re real, Rudy here is real, let’s stick together and find the others. Act normal.”

“What’s going on?” Kerry finally choked out. She caught her balance on the handles of the wheelchair, and began to push Rudy along. It was slow and steady and gave her something to hold onto. She followed Syd, who worked her way down the hall, calling the names of their friends.

“Like I’ve been saying, we’re not really here.”

“But you just said—”

“Shhh. We’re _real_ , we’re just not really _here_. Our _minds_ are here. Our _bodies_ are in that room I’ve been dreaming about. David’s brain-monster has all our minds trapped inside _his_ mind. The glasses let us see what’s real instead of what’s just the monster trying to confuse us.”

The barred door rattled behind them, making them jump. “Creepy Walter’s just an illusion?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Syd rolled her eyes. “He just happens to be stuck in here with us, too. But the one we really have to watch for is Lenny. Dr. Busker. _She’s_ the Monster, if you haven’t guessed already.”

Kerry peered over the top of the glasses, and jumped as a swarm of zombies lumbered toward her again. She quickly pushed them back in place. “Where did you find these?”

“Cary gave them to me.”

Kerry stopped. Rudy wobbled in his chair. “What?”

“Not you, your… other… half.” Syd peeked around a corner before beckoning them to follow.

“I know, but… you’ve seen him? Where is he?!”

“Shhhh, keep it down! We don’t want to make the monster suspicious. Cary’s fine. He’s got a plan to trap the monster in the real world. We just have to find everyone else and get us all ready to make the jump back to reality once he succeeds.”

“But why didn’t he come to _me_?”

“Does it matter? We’re all getting out of here.”

Did it matter? Of course it mattered. Here she was running from sociopathic perverts all over an undead-infested mental hospital looking for him, while the whole time he was in the so-called “real world” calmly handing out magic glasses to people who weren’t even _her_. He had a _plan_ that _she_ knew nothing about. They were supposed to be inseparable. _He should have been freaking out about this as much as she was._

“The others are all in place: let’s go.” Cary glanced at Oliver’s recently-refilled martini and added, “You haven’t come up with any sort of plan while I was away, have you?”

“Right, you’re going to have to take descant, I’m afraid young David doesn’t quite have the competence for much more than melody–”

“What-?”

“Our quartet, of course.”

“I-I-I don’t think this is the right _time_ to start a barbershop quartet.”

“True, we’re still missing a good solid bassman. I can handle it in a pinch, b–”

“The monster, Oliver, what about the monster?”

“Definitely a bass, but not much of a team player.” Cary groaned, but Oliver went on, “which is why I hope your little mind-cage tiara works, or this will all fall apart. Lead the way, Jules!”

The moment they flicked through the cryo chamber, Cary tried to draw Oliver’s attention to it, pointing and gesturing as frantically as Jules Verne would let him. He wasn’t sure if Oliver had gotten the point, because he wore the same unchanging puzzled frown for the entire journey, up until the moment they spotted Melanie through the mirror in the wall. Then, his eyes lit with curiosity.

But Melanie had eyes only for the diving suit. “Oh. I thought you were…” she said so defeatedly when Cary removed the helmet. He sighed. _Enough of this ridiculous suit!_ Whether they succeeded or failed here, at least they wouldn’t need to navigate the Astral Plane in it anymore. He hurried to the side to tug the rest of it off, leaving the real Oliver to introduce himself to the woman who’d been waiting for him.

Cary stayed in the back corner, by his own frozen body, trying to give space to the long lost lovers. Oliver had turned up the charm (but did women actually find bawdy limericks charming? Cary had never quite understood that), but, from the sound of things, he still wasn’t sure who Melanie was. Well, at least they still seemed to _like_ each other. “Where did you say that device was again? The, uh, halo?”

Cary realized Oliver was speaking to him, now. “Here, in my hand.” He was a little surprised how easy it was to take the device from himself. Not bad for a ghost.

They tried to knock the bullets out of the air, but this just burned their skin. “Could you try to hit them with, with your martini glass?”

“It’s only a _mental_ martini glass!” Oliver protested. “Anyway, I doubt it could—” he tapped it against a bullet. The glass shattered and vanished. “And now I’m out a drink.”

“Well, we can’t risk using the halo to—Melanie do you have anything we—” Cary looked around. “Melanie?”

“I’m here,” she called from the doorway. She joined them, and started to push on the frozen arm of Syd. “I found Rudy upstairs, stabbed through the heart. He’s nearly dead, which I suppose accounts for his catatonic state at Clockworks. I spoke to him— hopefully his mind in the illusion will hear and be able to act—”

Cary stared at the Rudy-like person holding the machine gun. “Which means this one, here—” His eyes met Melanie’s and they both said, “Walter,” at once.

“Or, The Eye,” she continued, “or whatever he’s calling himself nowadays.”

“I met a Walter once,” Oliver mused.

Something pummeled Kerry from the side, knocking her away from the wheelchair and her magic glasses from her face. Walter. She threw him off, but found herself surrounded by zombies again.

 _They’re just illusions_ , she reminded herself. _You_ know _they’re just illusions. The glasses made them disappear_. But illusion or not, they were swarming her. She couldn’t stand there and take it, not even from illusions. She kicked, she flailed, she punched, she barely heard Syd shout out a warning.

And an entirely unillusory Walter punched her. She reeled, then swung back. Syd started to pound on him from the other side, and they all fell to the floor, still scuffling.

Suddenly Syd backed away, and a bright light shone directly into Kerry’s face. She squinted past the source—a handheld spotlight— and into the grinning face of Dr. Busker— or Lenny— or…the Monster? Yeah. The maniacal scarecrow leering at them was definitely a Monster.

“Hi.”

Her—its?—grin changed to a scowl, directed above Kerry’s head—at Walter, who tightened the headlock he had on her as if nothing had happened. “You _rise_ when the king appears!” Lenny raised her arm, and the grip on Kerry’s neck loosened. She fell backward. Walter was floating forward, wiggling limply. Lenny circled her hands as if pulling him on invisible marionette strings.

This _had_ to be an illusion. But Syd, in her magic Cary-glasses, looked just as shocked as Kerry felt.

“You know,” the Lenny-Monster said, “it’s been fun, but you can go.” She pinched her fingers together, and then, _Walter_ pinched. He folded up, a bit at a time, squished as if made of cardboard but still, terror-stricken, trying to breathe. She crushed him in a snap of her fingers and he disappeared.

Kerry darted a look at Syd. Judging by the horrified look on her face, the view through the glasses wasn’t much different from what Kerry was seeing without them.

 _Damn_. She hated the guy, but… _no_ one deserved… I mean… _damn_.

The Lenny-Monster loomed over them, creeping closer. Kerry and Syd scooted backwards across the floor, unable to manage anything more. “Okay kids, prepare to die.” The Monster suddenly cocked her head, as if listening to something in another room. “Whoops, back in a second,” she said, and vanished, leaving them stunned.

They were having no luck moving the bodies. Cary wondered if the only reason he could pick up the halo was that he—his physical self—had already been holding it. Would he be able to move his own body? He gave his own arm a shake, and there _was_ a slight give to it. “Careful, or you’re going to wake up with bruises you don’t remember getting,” Oliver remarked.

Cary realized the withering look that had sprung to his face would be lost on Oliver, so he said, “I’m used to it.” He coughed. “Maybe we’re just not putting enough force into it, if we all work together…”

He and Melanie put all their energy into trying to shift the embracing Syd-and-David just an inch or two, but Oliver stood watching bemusedly.

“May I?” Oliver cleared his throat. When they turned to look at him, he continued, “Where was I? Oh yes, here we go.” And Oliver began to conduct an unseen orchestra.

They heard the music anyway, out of the air—was that “Bolero”?—and, stranger still, they could _see_ the music, like a misty rainbow of letters swirling in the center of the room. As Oliver conducted, the music wove together and built itself into a shield between the suspended bullets and their intended victims.

So hypnotized was Cary that it took Melanie shrieking his name and grabbing his arm to jolt him back to the present. He looked up, and wished he hadn’t.

The Rudy-looking gunman had indeed been Walter. But what had been Walter was now a gushing fountain of blood, collapsing as it emptied onto the floor.

Cary gulped and glanced at the halo device, still in his hands. _Oh, right_. That monster had to be stopped, and it was now or never. He set his jaw and stepped toward David, lifting the device toward his head.

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and he lost his balance—no, he’d been _pushed_. He and Oliver found themselves in a heap against the back wall together. As he raised his head and watched Oliver’s musical shield begin to disintegrate, he realized what he’d seen. The _Monster_ had flung them there. The Monster had been _here_ , in this very room, and it was not happy with them.

Before Kerry and Syd could scramble to their feet, the Monster reappeared above them. “Where were we? Oh yeah, I was killing you!” She mimed a gunshot to head, and Kerry felt her own head jerk in reflection.

But then, someone grabbed the Monster from behind. _Rudy!_ He’d launched himself from his chair, and hung, dead weight, on Lenny’s back. She elbowed him and clawed at him, but Rudy held tight. In a burst of light, the Monster flung herself backwards at him and all the way down the hall.

They were free to run. But the whole hospital had started shaking, and sparking, and crumpling around them…

Whatever happened when time unfroze would have to happen. The Monster needed to be caught _now_. Cary stood up and set the device firmly on David’s head.

In an instant he found himself across the room. He caught himself from toppling over, and dared to look up. All the frozen bodies—except Walter’s, which he carefully avoided looking at—stirred back to life. He could feel Kerry relaxing her stance behind him, and he turned to reach out to her, but she was already walking away.

No one had been shot. Apparently, on awakening, David had caught the bullets in his hand.

Kerry kept her distance from Cary the whole way home. She slipped into the vehicle he didn’t take, and then, when they reached the grounds of Summerland, she kept the others between herself and Cary and Ptonomy, who carried Rudy’s body between them on a stretcher, as they processed through the woods. When they stopped for a rest, and Cary had stepped away, Kerry approached the body to pay her respects.

To think, Rudy had been half-dead that whole time, and he’d still managed to save them. _Half-dead_ , and he’d done more for her today than Cary had.

“Kerry—”

She didn’t budge. _Here it comes._ What kind of excuse, what kind of lame apology, was he going to pull out on her?

But before he said another word to her, he’d shouted, “No!” and stepped right between her and Rudy— right _over_ them as if they were fallen branches in his path!— yelling at David not to mess up his precious monster-isolation device, because of course that was most important. His plans, his science experiments, his big-brained innovations, were always more important than _people_. Than _her_.

Then she noticed the others had stopped yelling. They were all looking around. Melanie was gone.

“I… guess she went ahead?” Syd said finally.

“Marvelous, you all survived! Except for that unfortunate fellow, but he already was doing poorly, as I recall.” It was a deep, melodious, Kiwi voice Kerry hadn’t heard in decades. She almost managed to crack a smile as she turned toward Oliver Bird, hailing them from the path ahead. “But good news: I remembered how to cook brunch! I even remembered the word ‘brunch’! Would anyone care to join me in the partaking of brunch?”

They gathered in the dining area, where Oliver had already set the table. The proud chef beamed at the exhausted, relieved assembled, then muttered to Cary, “Where is that lovely, stately woman with the blonde bouffant?”

“Oliver, that’s Melanie. Your wife. Try to remember.”

“Oh!” A pause. “I can’t, sorry.” He shook his head. “My _wife_. An older woman.” He growled appreciatively as he started to serve the eggs.

“Not, not really, you’ve just been in cryostasis for twenty years.”

“Ah, yes. So much to catch up on. So many people to meet. Welcome to Summerland!” he announced to the room. “I’m your host, Oliver Bird. How do you feel about Beat poetry?”

Oliver had just started reciting Kerouac when Melanie showed up. Cary watched them flirt awkwardly and felt a pang. He’d been Best Man at their wedding, even given a clumsy facsimile of a speech–which Kerry, Maid of Honor (and assumed by most of the guests to be Oliver’s 13-year-old niece), had interrupted with, “What he _means_ to say is, some people just belong together, but _most_ people aren’t lucky enough to be _born_ together, so _they_ have to get married instead, and that’s Melanie and Oliver.” Now he was watching them treat each other as (albeit intriguing) strangers. He instinctively looked for Kerry to check her reaction, and that’s when he realized she wasn’t with them.

He finally spotted her by the windows, gazing morosely outside. He raised his eyebrows and beckoned her over, but she ignored him. Frowning, he joined her, and said quietly, “I know you’re not a fan of mealtime. Did you wanna—?” How long had it been since they’d merged? Half a day or so for their bodies, but even longer— days? Months?— as minds. _Separate minds,_ who knew they _just belonged_ together, but…still. Separate.

“I’m good.” She didn’t look at him.

“All right,” he said reluctantly. She had to be starving. “Did you want something?” He wracked his brain for something she wouldn’t be repulsed by eating. “There’s soup.”

“You left me,” she growled almost before he finished speaking. “I needed you and _you LEFT me_.” Without a glance at him she turned and stomped out the door.

Cary gaped after her, the omelet in his stomach suddenly turning to lead. He had…? she thought he had…? but what could he have done differently? He thought he’d been dreaming when he followed Oliver, and then they were dealing with a crisis situation. Surely she understood, with a crisis situation…?

He watched her from the window as she stormed down to the lake, where she starting throwing rocks. She wasn’t even trying to skip them. Just lob, sploosh, _drown, rock!_ over and over. After awhile he turned back to the room, where Oliver and Melanie continued their bittersweet reunion, his face strained with trying to remember, hers alternating between hope and heartbreak. At the other end of the table, Syd watched David talk to his sister over by the coffee machine, an expression much closer to the positive side of Melanie’s on her own face.

Cary approached Syd, and reached out to tap her shoulder, then remembered that anyone who touched Syd would abruptly find themselves body-swapped. He pulled back with a slight yelp, wrung his hands for a minute, and cleared his throat. Syd frowned and glanced back at him. He pulled up a chair beside her.

“Uh, excuse me, Syd? Do you mind me asking, uh, what happened, back in the hospital fantasy, after I spoke with you?” It occurred to him she was a little distracted, watching David, so he clarified, “What, what happened with, with Kerry?”

Syd opened her mouth in an O, and nodded, giving him that unnervingly perceptive look. “She was scared,” she said matter-of-factly. “The Eye was stalking her, she kept seeing zombies everywhere, and she couldn’t find you. She, um,” she leaned in as if trying to break it down for him slowly, “seemed a little upset that I had seen you and she hadn’t.”

Cary gulped. His throat had gone dry. “Well, uh, time was, time was of the essence…”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’d hoped _she_ was of the essence, too.”

He gulped again. Point taken.

Division Three invaded Summerland later that morning. It was an anticlimactic invasion. David ended it almost immediately by sweeping all the Division Three goons into some kind of creepy tower of wiggling body parts. Their leader, the D3 interrogator they’d left for dead the day they’d rescued David and brought him to Summerland, he left alive. He wanted to strike up some kind of bargain with D3, or at least just hold the man for questioning. Melanie wasn’t so sure about this, so while they argued it out, they kept the man in their own interrogation room, and Kerry offered to stand guard.

She had something to prove. Maybe nobody else noticed. Guard duty had always come naturally to her. But that was the point. She was the Fighter. She was the Merciless Warrior, the toughest, strongest, and, yes, bravest person at Summerland.

But the hospital fantasy had caught her with her guard down, running and crying and helpless. She’d been terrified, she’d been weak, she’d been panicky. But only because her _stupid brother_ had disappeared on her. Her rock, her constant, had left her anchorless, and now he didn’t even understand what he’d done wrong!

The humiliation burned in her, fueling her anger. She paced restlessly, like a wind-up toy twisted to its max. She glared at the captured interrogator, remembering their last meeting. She’d fought to get into that facility, and she’d fought like hell to get David and the rest of them out. _She was the Fighter_.

Her prisoner kept trying to strike up a conversation.

“Drop it,” she’d snap.

“Just trying to be friendly,” the prisoner insisted. “Isn’t that what David wants? For all of us to just get along?”

“Then you be friendly with David. _I_ am not friendly. _I_ am not to be messed with.”

“Got it,” he replied, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he found it funny, which annoyed her even more.

Once Cary came to the door of the interrogation room, a glass of water in his hand. Kerry glared at him and turned away.

“I thought you might be thirsty,” he said to the interrogator, and he started to hand him the glass.

Dummy really did know nothing about dealing with prisoners, did he. _You go and hand something over directly, the prisoner’s going to grab you and flip you and slip out the door—that you of course left open—while you’re down_. She bit her tongue as long as she could, then finally rounded on him. “On the table.”

Cary obediently set the glass on the table, watching her warily. She stared at him out of the corner of her eye until he understood the hierarchy at work. _I am the enemy-interaction expert. I am the only reason you survived junior high school._

But maybe meeting his eyes was a mistake. He now had the nerve to speak to her directly. “Do you have a second to—”

“Don’t talk to me.” She spun away again.

“Right, sorry.” He stood awkwardly tapping his hands together. “Just— you should, um—we should— _recharge_.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m _good_.”

Her prisoner asked airily, “You two have a fight?”

“Shut up,” she spat.

“She just— we— she thinks I left her when we were in the Astral Plane.” _Oh my god, Cary, as if it’s any of his business_. “And I—I’ve _tried_ to explain,” his voice got all pleady as he looked at her, “that it wasn’t my—”

“You need to leave.”

His face fell. _Good_. She glared at him until he had backed the whole way out of the room.

The interrogator watched all this as if it was a slightly amusing soap opera. He cocked his head and remarked, “He seems nice.”

Right. _Nice_. Of course he was _nice_. He couldn’t _not_ be nice. As if “nice” _meant_ anything besides cowardly, wishy-washy, irresponsible traitor. _Nice_ didn’t redeem anybody.

This morning they had escaped an impossible mental death trap and one of his dearest friends had come back from the basically-dead. It should have been a time of celebration. Instead it was shaping up to be the worst day of Cary’s life.

Division Three had found Summerland and now Melanie was talking about… _moving house_. Their home of over thirty years. The campus they’d poured their souls into building. Summerland was compromised, their safe haven had become unsafe.

The cage he’d created for that…that monster… was beginning to fail. No matter what he tried to boost the power, it just kept draining away again, leaving David’s brain vulnerable to override by sadistic demon. And David was being entirely uncooperative about waiting for him to fix it.

And on top of it all, Kerry—his oldest friend, his constant companion, his sister, his child, his heart itself—refused to speak to him.

He was perversely relieved to have a puzzle he could focus on, a problem ostensibly within his power to solve. _How to remove a psychic parasite_. He even had Oliver to help.

Oliver had always been the Ideas Man. It wasn’t as if Cary didn’t have his own ideas, but it had been Oliver’s uninhibited, grandiose “What IF we”s that always pushed Cary to figure out _how_ , from automating Summerland to turning what young mutants came to them claiming as curses into gifts. Bouncing ideas off of each other found them solutions they would never have figured out on their own. 

So before long, they’d come up with a device Oliver called The Monster Magnet. This he always said in his best Bela Lugosi voice, and he spent a good portion of the machine’s early construction singing “The Monster Mash” on repeat until Cary asked him to _please_ go map out the circuits they might need to rewire in the electrical room to consolidate power. By the time he came back, he’d forgotten about “The Monster Mash,” and resumed trying to recruit Ptonomy as bassman for their barbershop quartet.

Finally they’d programmed something that could latch on to every not-David brainwave in his head and suck it right out of him. Oliver hooked David up in the exam room and headed back to the electrical room to control the power flow. Cary settled at the control center in the observation room, in radio contact with Oliver. Melanie and Syd waited tensely beside him. He explained to them what was supposed to happen, admittedly making it sound a little simpler than it actually was, though they both still looked worried. And how could he blame them? He’d never done anything as complex, and with quite as high stakes, as this before.

The machine shuddered to life—David shuddered a bit, too, but that was to be expected—and Cary and Oliver gradually increased the power. And then, piece by piece, the parasitic brainwaves on the monitor peeled away, sucked into the Monster Magnet vortex. “It’s working.” Cary pointed to the monitor for the sake of the others. “See? It’s working!”

Then, the progress flickered. “Hold on, it’s — it’s fighting back.”

Oliver’s voice chimed through the lab, but it was only a pre-recorded alert: “Malfunction detected!” On the exam table, David’s convulsions intensified, now accompanied by screaming.

“No.” Syd jumped up. “Stop it, we have to.”

“Sit,” Melanie ordered her.

Yes, it looked bad, but all they needed was a few more seconds and a little more… “Oliver, I need more power!”

Syd and Melanie scuffled behind him, then Melanie exclaimed, “What is she _thinking_?!” A moment later Syd crossed in front of the observation window with a look of grim determination. Melanie yelled, “STOP!” and Cary waved at her to just hold on, but she ignored them and stepped right past all the cautionary lasers. And then _Syd_ , who would switch minds with whomever she touched, gave her possessed boyfriend a kiss.

A bright explosion flung her backward. Whatever had just happened, Cary didn’t trust it. He grabbed a syringe of tranquilizer and sprinted into the exam room.

But someone else got there before him. _Kerry_ , ready for a fight. And now Syd—who wasn’t Syd—whose eyes glowed with yellow malice—headed right for her, a bare hand outstretched.

“Halt!” he yelled, brandishing the syringe. Kerry glanced back at him, as if to tell him off, then turned back just in time for Not-Syd to plant a bare hand on Kerry’s face. Cary froze in horror.

Kerry spun toward him. _Not_ Kerry.

It stared out of his sister’s face with bilious yellow eyes. It twisted his sister’s mouth into the meanest, nastiest smirk. _His Kerry_ clearly wanted him to die.

“Ker—” She cut him off with a roundhouse kick hard into his ribcage. He crumpled to the floor.

A haze of gunshots and screaming and the shattering of glass swirled above him. The whole lab was exploding. _Everything_ was exploding.

60-some years with Kerry had put him through a lot, physically. The shared bruises grew more intense as her enemies did. And there’d always been poking and shoving and kicking under the table and the sort of playful swats that were part and parcel of having a close, rather rambunctious sibling. But never, ever, in sixty-plus years, had she ever intentionally _hurt_ him.

He’d seen what happened. He thought he understood. It wasn’t her, it was the parasite. The Monster. But she _had_ been so awfully angry with him. Maybe the parasite used what was already present in its victims’ brains. Maybe it fed off the anger it found. Maybe it had just coaxed her into doing what she _really wanted to do_.

He couldn’t get up. It might have been because he’d been hurt too badly, or maybe there was just no point. He’d been ripped in half.

Kerry awoke to David shaking her shoulder. “Hey hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. He’s gone.”

She blinked. How had she gotten onto the floor of the hallway? She watched David help up the D3 interrogator down the hall and tried to think back. She’d been _guarding_ the interrogator. They were watching the Monster-extraction over a monitor, and then…and then she’d _seen_ it, the Devil with Yellow Eyes, so she’d run to the lab, but by then it had taken over Syd, and Cary was yelling behind her, and Syd was reaching toward her, and…

_CARY!_

Quick as her still-unsteady legs could handle, she dashed back to the lab.

“Hey.” He opened his eyes and looked straight into those familiar deep brown ones, the ones that looked so much like their mother’s. They were wide and worried and a little wet, and not the slightest bit yellow. She lifted his head and squeaked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” He stared. The entire day passed silently between them. Was he okay? He was, _now_ …considering. “I think you ruptured my spleen,” he admitted.

Kerry threw her arms around him. It wasn’t to merge or to wrestle or to fight. It was a simple, heartfelt hug. Being that her expressions of physical affection usually involved punching, he was stunned. Then he hugged her back.

“How did— how did you get rid of the Shadow King?” he asked after a bit.

She paused before answering. “I’m not…sure? David just kind of… blasted it away.”

“Away? Away where?” Suddenly alarmed, he tried to stand, but overshot and started to topple. Kerry helped him up. “Is David—?”

He surveyed the room. David, helping Syd up, looked just fine— more than fine. The most content Cary had ever seen him. Syd, too, was completely yellow-eye free. Ptonomy, looking incredulous but brown-eyed. Melanie, stumbling in the door, bleary-eyed but not yellow-eyed.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally. “It needs a host, the Shadow King. So if it’s not in one of us—”

Melanie yawned and looked around. “Where’s Oliver?”

A look of dawning horror passed around the room from face to face. “Oliver?!” Melanie spun and lunged back out the door, and nearly everyone else followed her. But Cary felt faint. He started to keel over. Kerry caught him, steadied him, helped him into a chair.

Kerry was passing up a chase, just to get him a chair.

“It’ll be all right. We’ll find him. At least he’s on this plane of existence now.” She squeezed his hand briefly, and then pulled herself right on through.

There was silence as she settled into place. The pain in his chest eased slightly, almost immediately. And then: _Thank god. I’ve been so hungry._

Cary started to laugh, but that still hurt too much. He managed to choke out, “You know, you do have a fully-functional digestive system of your own.”

 _I don’t know. I think I ruptured our spleen_.

“We’ll just have to concentrate on Clean Eating for awhile, and watch for—”

 _Cary! We’re gonna be fine. Honest_.

“That so?”

 _Yeah. No matter what happens, we’ve still got each other_.


End file.
